Eighty Is Not Enough: One Actor's Journey Through American Entertainment (2 page)

I played a television dad in
Eight Is Enough
. But playing a character in a television show doesn’t magically turn you into that character. Actors pretend to be policemen, doctors, and scientists, but that hardly gives them the courage of a cop, the judgment of a doctor, or the brilliance of a scientist. Oddly, I’ve known actors who confuse their real and fictional persona. Nothing is more absurd. Like everyone else, what I’ve learned about being a father has come from my own life, my own family and from the challenge of raising my own children.

Still, like any father, there were things I could bring to the role of a TV dad that may have contributed some authenticity to the show. Also, it’s inevitable that during a long-running show, relationships develop among the various characters, both on and off camera. Those relationships are as varied as they are in real life. There are the good things: admiration, pride, caring, and compassion; there are also the bad things, the worst of which is jealousy. Through the years I’ve tried to keep in touch with the casts of both
Eight Is Enough
and
I Remember Mama
. I’ve always considered them like second families. And like any family there have been successes and disappointments, even tragedies. There is a great deal of pressure on performers—especially young performers—when they come off a successful show. I’ve felt it myself, and I’ve seen many others confronted by it.

Over the past eighty years, I’ve been fortunate to see firsthand the many great changes in American entertainment. Most remarkable was the advent of television, and I’ve never lost my astonishment at its awesome power. I participated in the transition from radio to television in the late 1940s, and the power of the new medium was immediately recognizable. Recently, I was struck again by the magnitude of television’s place in American culture in a very personal way.

In the recent presidential election, Americans were fortunate to have two exceptional candidates in terms of their personal integrity and character. The nomination and election of the first African-American as President of the United States certainly reflects a tremendous advance from the days of my own youth when segregation and racial bias were still ugly stains on America. Regardless of one’s political views, all Americans should be proud of this extraordinary moment in our history.

Most astonishing to me, however, was that at a key moment in the campaign
Eight Is Enough
actually enjoyed a brief resurgence on the world stage. On the night of President Obama’s historic acceptance speech at Denver’s Invesco Field, I was watching at home with my family. About midway through, I nearly fell off my chair as the Democratic nominee made a clear reference to
Eight Is Enough
. “We love this country too much to let the next four years look just like the last eight,” Obama told the massive throng of supporters. “On November 4, we must stand up and say: ‘Eight is enough.’”

The next day in an article titled, “Somewhere, Dick Van Patten is Smiling,” television writer Michael Malone noted: “Even Dick Van Patten’s wise Bradford patriarch character couldn’t have predicted what would happen next.” He was right. No sooner than Obama said it, some eighty-thousand people began chanting in unison “Eight is enough, Eight is enough,” as literally tens, if not hundreds of millions of viewers watched worldwide. I sat there, not only “smiling,” but absolutely astonished.

Numerous writers commented on President Obama’s reference to the show. David Remnick gently lampooned the phrase in
The New Yorker
, noting that John F. Kennedy in his acceptance speech had cited the prophet Isaiah, Oliver Cromwell, Henry II, and Lloyd George, while Barack Obama chose to cite an old television show. Remnick wrote: “For the culturally disadvantaged, ‘
Eight Is Enough
’ is a reference to a Dick Van Patten sitcom of the late seventies.” Roger Catlin of the
Hartford Courant
wondered if “future historians [will] get all of its references centuries from now?” Will they know, Catlin wrote, that Obama was “gently referring to the 1970s sitcom starring Dick Van Patten?” And comedian Jon Stewart of
The Daily Show
also “picked up on the pop cultural reference.” The next day, Stewart poked fun at the line by constructing a mock speech made up only of television shows. Pretending to be a presidential candidate, Stewart announced: “We must take it
One Day at a Time
! To restore
Good Times
and
Happy Days
. Whether you’re
Married with Children
or just
Friends
,
Cheers
to you.
Monday Night Football
.”

I was delighted by the President’s reference to our show. But it also underscored the enormous power of television. Remnick, among the most prominent writers in America, argued that Obama’s “homey sloganeering”—which, according to Remnick, included the reference to
Eight Is Enough
—“worked.” In other words, Obama’s policy platform was best served when joined with a vision of what is good about America. Without overstating its significance, I think it’s fair to say that the ideal of an American family and a positive way of life was, for many people of President Obama’s generation, at least partially represented by the Bradford family. But never in my wildest dreams did I expect to hear it alluded to at this historic moment. I hope all the hundreds of people associated with the show were as thrilled as I was.

*  *  *

For nearly eight decades I’ve had the great fortune of playing thousands of roles before millions of people. I’ve enjoyed every step of the journey. Now, I look back with a mix of emotions; sadness for the people who are gone, nostalgia for times that have passed, but immense gratitude for the wonderful opportunities that came my way. I’ve titled this book
Eighty Is Not Enough
not just for the obvious play on words, but as a way of expressing the single idea that has governed my entire life; that every moment of life is precious; that every step we take is an adventure; that every day on earth is a gift from God.

I imagine that anyone turning eighty would say, “Eighty is not enough.” I hope that thought is moved less by a fear of what comes after this journey than a love of life itself. The truth is, I still wake up early to meet the new day. While I don’t jump out of bed with the nimbleness of my youth, I’ve retained a desire to see what’s new for today and what’s on the horizon for tomorrow. I don’t believe that will ever change. My son, Jimmy, has recently described me as someone who enjoys the simple things in life: “My dad can find something awesome in a can of coke,” he says. I think he’s right. There is so much in this wonderful life we take for granted—things, as Jimmy says, we should really experience with a sense of awe.

I’ve also made more than my share of mistakes. I’ll talk about some of that; and I hope to do so in a way that’s honest, but without being hurtful to others. Revealing things backstage is always a bit dicey. But it’s the challenges we confront as much as our triumphs, the failings as much as the victories that reveal the full measure of our lives. When I decided to set down my memoirs, it was with the idea of showing that an imperfect life, as mine has been, can still be a wonderful life.

My career began in a baby carriage. That’s how Mom always told it. Pushing me up and down the streets of Kew Gardens in the late 1920s, people would stop and comment to her: “You should bring that baby to a modeling agency!”

Most mothers hearing such flattery would be both delighted—and satisfied. But not Jo. Immediately she began imagining the possibilities. Mom had already been dreaming about Broadway and the world of entertainment she had come to love, but I was still too young for that. So why not get started with some modeling.

Attitude, I’m convinced, is the first step toward success of any kind. Nothing is more important than the ability to see or imagine something that appears unlikely, or even ridiculous, and still hold firmly to a belief that you can make it happen—even in the face of skepticism and ridicule. And that was Mom’s strength. Once the idea of turning me into a child model entered her head, she never let it go, and she had the kind of self-confidence to think that nothing was outside her grasp.

And so after a few baby-carriage compliments, Jo was on the hunt. She poured through newspapers and magazines looking for pictures of child models. As she did, she became even more convinced she could make it happen. First, she asked around and learned the names of all the modeling agencies in Manhattan; then she began taking me on the E-Train from Kew Gardens across the East River for interviews at the studios in Manhattan.

Jo began at the top. In 1932, when I was three years old, she brought me for a test at John Robert Powers, the biggest modeling agency in New York City. The Powers agency, on 277 Park Avenue in Manhattan, took a look at me and signed us up.

The photo shoots were done at studios spread across Manhattan from 42
^nd
Street to downtown—which even today is the center of New York’s modeling locales. Looking back, the technology of the 1930s seems archaic. This was long before digital photos or even Polaroid. Today, we have cellular phones that take pictures that are often as good as those produced by the best equipment in 1933. And color photography was only just beginning to be marketed with the introduction of Kodachrome film two years later.

I hated the shoots. Dressed in the clothes they were advertising, I had to sit there still as a corpse for fear of blurring the shot if I dared to move. The photographer held up a stick with a little fake bird on the end, while in his other hand he kept a rubber ball attached to the camera, which he squeezed as he took the picture. And right before shooting, he would bark out the same monotonous instructions over and over again: “Watch the birdie! Watch the birdie! Stand still! Don’t move! Now watch the Birdie!” There were, of course, times when I did move, ruining the picture. Then he’d become exasperated and yell at me: “Do it over! Now don’t move! Don’t move!” This would go on for hours, and the truth is I couldn’t wait until it was over. I was just a kid who wanted to be running around and playing games rather than stuck in those studios standing perfectly still for hours and wondering why they needed so many darn photographs. What’s the big deal, I thought. Just take the picture and let me out of here.

Even worse, as I got older I took some ribbing from the kids in the neighborhood. They knew I was going to Manhattan for these modeling jobs and would call me a sissy. That was horrible. I remember them yelling at me on the avenue: “Hey, Dickie, tomorrow we’re going to play punch ball,” knowing full well that I had a modeling job. Kids can certainly be cruel.

While I hated modeling, modeling didn’t hate me. I’ve made a point of never taking myself too seriously as an entertainer, but it’s true that I was a photogenic kid. Once I started with the Powers agency, the jobs just kept coming. I modeled for everything: Wonder Bread, toothpaste, endless clothing lines, and everything else imaginable. I was in all the Montgomery Ward catalogues wearing children’s clothing, especially the stylish pea caps that were so popular in the 1920s and 1930s.

My modeling was a financial bonanza for the family. In the middle of the Depression, I was getting five dollars an hour—more money at four years of age than most working men in the country. I now wonder how many hundreds or thousands of desperate people I passed by on the E-Train headed to these jobs. How many people would have given anything for the few bucks I made just by standing still for a photographer?

My modeling career peaked when, at age seven, I appeared on the cover of
The Pictorial Review
, one of the top magazines in the country. In 1935 making the cover of
The Pictorial Review
would be like being on the cover of
Life
magazine in the 1960s or maybe,
Vanity Fair
, today. Also, it was a color picture—which was rare in those days.

My mother considered that cover shot for
The Pictorial Review
one of our greatest achievements. She kept a copy hanging on the wall at the foot of the staircase, conspicuously placed so nobody who entered would miss it. The picture remained there for many years after I left home, and even my nephew Casey, who lived with Mom before his marriage in 1974, remembers the photo still on the same wall, some forty years after it first appeared on the newsstands of New York City. Mom took those baby-carriage compliments seriously and that cover shot was as meaningful to her as anything we would ever accomplish.

But modeling was just the beginning. Although it proved to be a needed financial boon, and certainly elevated Mom’s status among her friends who perused the magazines and were bombarded with pictures of her little Dickie modeling all the children’s clothing, still it was not really entertainment. Being a mainstay at John Robert Powers was great, but Mom had her sights on bigger things—especially the Broadway stage. She was working on that all through the modeling years, although the road we took was anything but a straight path.

The 1930s was a decade of pageants and contests. I like to believe it’s not so long ago when it seemed like every mother in America was marching their children down the boardwalk at the world-famous Atlantic City Baby Contest, or when throngs of beautiful young ladies vied for recognition in the endless stream of beauty contests held by every town, county and state—not to mention Miss America.

In the fall of 1934, when I was five years old, Mom learned of a talent contest for children held at the Willard Theater in Woodhaven, Queens, just a short distance from our home. I was already a precocious kid and beginning to enjoy some success on the modeling circuit, so the opportunity to step up to a stage performance seemed only natural. It was also what mom really wanted. The Willard Theater was a long way from Broadway, but I still remember her excitement the night I stood at a microphone on the Willard stage reciting a poem with the title, “Why I Love My Mother.” Frankly, I wasn’t too impressed with my performance, but I did come home the winner.